Windigo Island by William Kent Krueger Read Free Book Online Page B

and hopeless. “Go on back to bed.”
    In departing, the kid said nothing else to anyone. The door, when he closed it behind him, did not close gently.
    Louise fell silent, stared at the floor in front of her. When she looked up, her eyes glistened with tears. “I miss her so much,” she said. “And I swear if she comes back everything will be different.”
    Different how? Cork wanted to ask. Was it more than just the dirt and the disarray and the dysfunction? Which, clearly, this family could abide.
    Jenny, who’d been oddly quiet, said, “Go see Henry Meloux, Louise. Whatever that takes. I think he can help.”
    Louise reached out and impulsively took Jenny’s hands. “But I don’t know what he wants from me.”
    “Mariah’s most precious possession,” Jenny said. “Think about it. Take some time. My dad and I have some more people to see, but we’ll be back.”
    “All right.” Louise seemed stronger now, as if she’d taken some of Jenny’s strength, the strength of another woman who understood, into herself. “All right,” she said again and released her hold on Jenny’s hands.
    Cork said, “We’re going to talk with Carrie Verga’s family. And also the Bayfield County Sheriff’s Office. And I’d like to talk to Puck. Louise, is there anyone else you think we should see?”
    “Mariah talked about her basketball coach a lot.”
    “I know her,” English said. “We’ll talk to her, Louise.”
    The woman lifted her dark eyes, and Cork saw something that hadn’t been there when he’d first come in. It was something that worried him. Because what he saw was hope. And it worried him because so far he could see no reason to hope. He thought false hope was a far crueler thing than no hope at all.
    “Thank you,” Louise said to them all.
    Red Arceneaux said to them, “Migwech,” which meant “thankyou.”
    Once outside, they gathered at English’s pickup. “Why don’t we leave one of the vehicles here?” he suggested. “No reason to take two. You okay driving, Cork?”
    “I’d rather we used yours,” Cork said. He put his hand on the mud-spattered old pickup. “It’ll stand out less on the rez. And if folks here see you driving up, well, a guy who’s clearly Shinnob has a better chance of getting a reasonable reception. You okay with that?”
    “Sure,” English said. “Makes sense.” He looked back at the little, thrown-together house. “When I was a kid, if we saw Louise it was because she came down to Hayward to visit us. We never came up here. Pretty clear why.”
    “Yeah,” Jenny said. “I think this visit told us a lot.”
    “Oh?” Cork said. “What exactly did it tell us?”
    “It’s awfully late for her to worry about being a good mother, don’t you think, Dad? I mean, Christ, if I were Mariah, I’d’ve run away from that.”
    “I doubt it. That’s home,” Cork said. “That’s what she grew up with. Dirt and noise and crowding. She was used to it. No, I think something else made her run.”
    “What?”
    “Let’s keep talking to people. Maybe we’ll find out.”
    He opened the door of English’s pickup and gestured for Jenny to get in.

Chapter 7
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    T hey drove south out of Bad Bluff. The road ran beside Chequamegon Bay, a long, broad inlet of Kitchigami. The landscape was hills covered with a mix of deciduous and evergreen, checkered here and there with orchards and meadowland. The gloomy overcast had finally broken. Although there seemed to be no wind, the clouds were fast becoming dwindling islands of gray afloat in a vast ocean of blue sky. Below, the water of the bay lay flat and silver-blue in the morning sun.
    English was at the wheel of his pickup. Cork sat on the far passenger side. Jenny straddled the middle.
    “What exactly do you do as a game warden, Daniel?” she asked.
    “Mostly deal with guys trying to take what they’re not supposed to take or taking something when they’re not supposed to take it. Pretty